Thinking Back
by Katchan00
Summary: Matsumoto Rangiku thinks about how everything Ichimaru Gin did makes sense after what was revealed during the Kuchiki Rukia incident.


_In no way, shape or form do I take credit for creation or ownership of the Bleach series. The original manga is the property of Kubo Taito and the anime is the property of Studio Perriot._

Pure randomness about Matsumoto thinking about Gin sometime during her stay in Karakura with Orihime.

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Thinking Back**

Thinking back, I know that Gin knew what he was doing, what he would one day do to Soul Society, and to me, for a lot longer than any of us could have imagined. While I was still at the academy, Gin graduated with a seat in the fifth division, despite his inexperience. When I celebrated with him, he was already different from the boy I grew up with, and I'm not really talking about the physical changes that we explored that night with one another. His demeanor had changed, he'd become a little more guarded, but he played it off as some sort of game, like he always did. At the time, I'd known something was different, but I'd just chalked it up to all the rapid changes in our lives and took solace in being with him for the first of many many times to follow.

Knowing now that he was already entwined in Aizen's wicked plot so long ago, literally eons ago, makes understanding his behaviour now easier. The things he did then make more sense to me now than ever before.

After the first fervent night that we came together, we became steadily closer physically; to the point where, after a few months, I was sneaking into his room to see him more often than I was sleeping in my own room through the entire night. We were children then, and looking back... I'd allowed myself to get wrapped up in foolishness, just to stay close to him. For years we carried on like this, with me scurrying around Soul Society to see him in secret, while every few times, he would come to me. On the onset of our plunge into sexuality, he told me that we should keep what we were doing a secret, something precious between us that no one else should get to know about. At the time, I accepted that stipulation and thought to myself that he had a point; no one else would fully understand how someone so well-liked as I and so all-around unnerving to others as he would be able to coexist harmoniously together, but we had been doing it for forever and a day already, it seemed, making it perfectly natural to me. Their inability to understand lost them the right to know that I was falling in love with my best friend, despite the traits that pushed so many people away from him in the past and would continue to do so in the future.

I know now, as painful as it is for me to accept, that he didn't want anyone to know for one reason, and one alone: he didn't want Aizen Sousuke to find out. Many would call me presumptuous for thinking this, but after meeting his gaze when Gin said goodbye to me, out of the earshot of all others, I knew: Gin didn't want Aizen to know that we were important to one another besides friends, lest I became a bargaining chip that he could one day use against Gin. Knowing that I cared for him was of little consequence, but were he to know that Gin valued me as I do he, my life would be in more danger than it already is by aiding Hitsugaya-taichou and being in his expeditionary force to Karakura.

Of course, Gin isn't stupid, either. He knows that at least one other person outside the pair of us knew what we were doing. However, to my knowledge, Hitsugaya-taichou is the only other person in Seireitei that truly knows the depth of my relationship with Gin. After all, he'd have to be stupid to not know that his subordinate was leaving the compound almost nightly. As I mentioned, Gin isn't stupid, he knew that Taichou knew everything; he couldn't not know. This final epiphany took me longer than the others to realize, and it was the most harrowing for me to accept. He not only knew that Taichou had us figured out, he was glad; because he now knows that Taichou is aware of the danger I may still be in, and he knows that Hitsugaya Toushirou will never let anything happen to me if it's in his power to prevent it.

I think a part of me loves and hates both of them right now for all the same reasons, and I hate myself because I can't stop the tears from pouring down my face as I cry on Taichou's shoulder in Orihime-chan's apartment.


End file.
